TURNING away the boatloads of Europe-bound migrants back to Africa would end the flow of
illegal immigrants in “weeks,” said Marine Le Pen, a leading candidate in
France’s 2017 presidential election.

“We must rescue the people so that they don’t die
but we must take them back to their port of departure,” Le Pen said in an
interview at the headquarters of her party, the National Front, on the
outskirts of Paris. “Once we have done that for several weeks in a row, no one
will pay to risk their life crossing the Mediterranean.”

Polls show that Le Pen could make the second round
of the French 2017 presidential elections.
The 46-year-old has sought to make
the National Front, or the FN as it’s known, more respectable, trying to
transform it from a protest party tinged with racism and Holocaust denial.

She, however, remains true to the party’s
anti-immigrant principles.

Her comments come as Syria’s civil war, Libya’s
disintegration and turmoil in parts of the Horn of Africa
have pushed migration to Europe to levels not seen since the early 1990s, with
185,000 refugees gaining asylum in the 28-nation European Union in 2014.

In Italy alone, 60,000 migrants have arrived by sea
this year, with many of them then traveling north to other EU countries,
according to figures from the UN.

On June 22, the EU agreed to increase naval patrols
in the Mediterranean to help stem the flow. The Italian and other European
navies who rescue migrants and bring them to Sicily are “accomplices” of the
traffickers who organise the transit, Le Pen said.

France’s generous welfare state is what attracts
them, she said.

“No longer welcome”

“If migrants come to our country now, it’s because
France is one of the most attractive countries—it offers accommodation,
food, schooling, healthcare, for free,” she said. “We no longer have the
resources. We have to send a strong signal: we can no longer welcome you, we no
longer have the means, we have 7 million jobless and 9 million poor people, so
it’s over.”

While polls show Le Pen making the second round of
the presidential election, she would lose the run-off to any likely opponent
such as President Francois Hollande, Prime Minister Manuel Valls, former Prime
Minister Alain Juppe or former President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Sarkozy has upped his own rhetoric against
migrants, saying last week that illegal immigration was like a water leak
spreading to every room of a family home. Hollande said in response that
politicians would need to “exercise restraint.”

Sarkozy has also called for renegotiating the
Schengen accords that allow passport-free travel between 22 European countries,
while Le Pen calls for it to be simply scrapped.

“We must regain control of our border,” she said.
“That’s one element of people’s freedom: choosing who can come to your
homeland, who can stay in your homeland and what conditions you set to welcome
them.”